Recently I was out in Azshara fishing up some Globes of Water for one of the Engineering pets I have been crafting. You get the Globes from “Elemental Water” pools that can spawn in 6 different locations in the Bay of Storms. Now these sell for a fair bit, and are rarely in the Auction House, which is why I was out there, but they are not what this post is about!

The Elemental Water pools are a little hard to see, so my bobber was out of the pool once and I didn’t notice until I fished up a Darkclaw Lobster. I looked at it and had a flashback to years ago when I was leveling my cooking, and I’d needed Darkclaw Lobsters, but they were really expensive. I quickly logged onto a character by an Auction House and checked to see how many were available. None! So, I decided to set aside 30 minutes to fish up as many as I could and then go and see how much I could sell them for.

I set my little stopwatch and started fishing, and when my time was up I had 59 Darkclaw Lobsters and 34 Winter Squids. I headed back to Stormwind and sceptically posted them in the Auction House for 10g a piece. To my amazement, they actually started to sell!

Now, I don’t believe this will be any kind of steady income, as people will only buy the lobsters and squids when they are leveling cooking, but if you happen to be in Azshara for something anyway or if you are just starting out and need some quick gold, casting away 30 minutes of your time is most definitely worth it! Watch out for those pools of Elemental Water as well, because the Globes of Water sell for 20-50g each on my server and I collected 8 of them before I accidentally caught that golden lobster!

This is rather interesting, as it is but an example of how old world items became rare over the course of time and can now be sold for insane prices. There are many more which aren’t farmed or gotten from leveling characters either, and I like to snatch those up for my unrivaled monopoly of uncommon stuff.
Thanks for this posting, as it drove my attention to some new ideas on that topic!
However, one should remember that the demand for those will probably be less or nonexistant soon (temporarily), for the Pilgrim’s Bounty will allow anyone to actually “start” cooking at 330 or so and therefore skipping the old world recipes completely.

Bobbins : Not everyone is aware of the easy Pilgrims Bounty cooking leveling, the fact that I sold these just 10 days before the event starts is proof of that. I make thousands selling people things they could buy from vendors if they just checked into it, but most people for whatever reason just don’t bother. I’m sure these will sell even during Pilgrims Bounty, lol. Of course stocking up on BC level foods for people leveling cooking past 350 is a great idea and something I’ve also done, but as a one time if you happen to be in the zone type deal, I’d still recommend taking the 30 minutes to get some lobsters.

Vayaz : It’s funny having played when such items were super common and not expensive at all, to see their prices now. I wasn’t about to go farm fish hundreds of these or anything, as I said it’s more of a ‘in the zone, why not fish’ type of thing, hehe. I am aware of Pilgrim’s Bounty next week, but that’s still lots of time to sell a few stacks to oblivious players, who I’m sure would buy them during Pilgrims Bounty, just because they have no idea.

You also have to take everyone’s impatience into consideration as well. What about the players that rolled their toon right after the holiday, or otherwise not close to it at all? They don’t have the the holiday crutch to lean on and in a society where everyone wants what they want and they want it yesterday, it’s not too hard to figure out why people still buy this stuff.

It’s the same reason you can sell stacks of boar meat for 20g. Impatience and Ignorance are a goldmaker’s best friends.

Thanks for the tip. Luckily my 80 shaman (with water walking <3) has fishing in the 300s so I remember fishing in Azshara before–it was probably for those items for the cooking.

Yesterday, globe of water was 15 gold buyout and there was only a few on the AH. Today there are more for about 9 gold. The lobster and squid were actually listed too! Maybe they read your blog and got the idea but they had a stack of 20 listed for 40 gold. I need to fish up the globes anyways but I'll hold on to the lobsters and squids for now. Btw, this fishing guide site I read said the Winter Squid can only be fished from Fall-Spring. I'm wondering if we save up the squid if we could get a better profit after spring? I don't want to put up links on here without your permission so let me know if you'd like too see that site.

Michelle : You might be able to get a better profit on them in a few days! I sold my first batch for 10g a piece, my second for 4g a piece because there were a few other stacks in the AH, but now there’s none again, lol. I’d say that saving the Winter Squids until summer could be worth it, except that I’m not sure what kinds of changes are going to be made to the types of fish in Azshara come Cataclysm. Also, each of the seasonal fish (Winter Squid & Summer Bass) are only used in one recipe each and both require 240 cooking. The recipes are both easy to get (one in STV, one in Tanaris) so it’s possible that if someone was leveling their cooking in the summer, and they could buy either Summer Bass, or the very pricey out of season Winter Squid, they’d likely just buy the bass. It’s hard to say though! Players aren’t big on looking into things, and if someone had missed picking up the Summer Bass recipe, they could potentially pay big for the unavailable Winter Squid if some were listed in the AH. If they are still seasonal come Cata, it just might be worth tossing a few stacks in the back of your guild bank for next summer!